The Patriot Post Brief 08-34

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-34
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION: COURAGE

“’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”  - Thomas Paine

OPINION IN BRIEF

“[John McCain] should ask Obama to join him in a town meeting on lessons from Russia’s aggression. Both candidates favor NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, perhaps Vladimir Putin’s next victim. But does Russia’s behavior cause Obama to rethink reliance on ‘soft power’  - dialogue, disapproval, diplomacy, economic carrots and sticks - which Putin considers almost an oxymoron? Does Russia’s resort to military coercion, and its arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles, cause Obama to revise his resistance to missile defense? Obama, unlike McCain, believes Russia belongs in the G-8. Does Obama think Russia should be admitted to the World Trade Organization? Does Obama consider Putin helpful regarding Iran?... McCain must convince voters that Obama’s complacent confidence in the taming abilities of soft power is the effect of liberalism’s scary sentimentalism about a dangerous thing, human nature, and a fiction, ‘the community of nations.’ McCain is hardly the change many people have been eagerly waiting for, but Putin is part of the change we must confront. Until Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it seemed that not even the Democratic Party could lose this election. But it might if McCain can make it turn on the question of who is ornery enough to give Putin a convincing, deterring telephone call at 3 a.m.”  - George Will

LIBERTY

“Whatever the political outcome of Russia’s invasion of Georgia, the incident has reminded American voters that in uncertain times it is dangerous to choose a rookie with no foreign policy experience and a juvenile approach to world affairs over one tempered by war who understands that U.N. resolutions might as well be written in disappearing ink. John McCain knows that peace through strength is what defeated the Soviet Union and that it’s peace through strength that will best preserve free nations and advance their interests.”  - Cal Thomas

THE GIPPER

“Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that’s now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.”  - Ronald Reagan

FOR THE RECORD

“The prevailing wisdom 18 months or so ago was that invading Iraq had been, in retrospect, a disastrous blunder. It had led to appalling sectarian fratricide and an ever-climbing body count. Iraqi democracy was deemed a naive pipe dream. Worst of all, it was said, the fighting in Iraq wasn’t advancing the global struggle against Islamist terrorism; by rallying a new generation of jihadists, it was actually impeding it. Opponents of the war clamored loudly for pulling the plug... But what if we had known then what we know now? We know now that the overhauled counterinsurgency strategy devised by General David Petraeus - the ‘surge’  - would prove spectacularly successful, driving Al Qaeda in Iraq from its strongholds, and killing thousands of its fighters, supporters, and leaders. We know now that US losses in Iraq would plummet to the lowest levels of the war, with just five Americans killed in combat in July 2008, compared with 66 fatalities in the same month a year ago - and with 137 in November 2004. We know now that the sectarian bloodletting would be dramatically reduced, with numerous Sunni tribal leaders abandoning their former Al Qaeda allies, and Shi’ite radical Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army being thoroughly routed by the Iraqi military. We know now that by the summer of 2008, the Iraqi government would meet all but three of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress to demonstrate security, economic progress, and political reconciliation. And we know now that, far from being undermined by the campaign in Iraq, the wider war against Islamist violence would show significant progress, with terrorism outside Iraq’s borders having ‘in fact gone way down over the past five years,’ as Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria noted in May - and with popular support for jihadist organizations plummeting across the Muslim world. So what does hindsight counsel today? That Iraq is a pointless quagmire - or that it is a costly but winnable war, in which patience, tenacity, and smarts have a good chance of succeeding?”  - Jeff Jacoby
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[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-34
From The Federalist Patriot
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FAMILY

“The reaction of the American Left to John Edwards’s sex scandal is nothing short of flabbergasting. Since when is sex outside of marriage a disqualifier for merely speaking at a political convention? Since when is having sexual relations with that woman in your office anything wrong? Since when do we judge? The difference here seems to be that Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. So only fatal disease makes the bonds of marriage sacred? Although the last thing I want to look to be doing is making excuses for adultery - what he did was wrong - the John Edwards incident begs Americans to look in the mirror. If we think what John Edwards did with Rielle Hunter is wrong, why do we think it’s wrong? Because marriage is at the foundation of our society and we should do what we can to protect every last one? Or simply because having fun while your wife is fighting a fatal disease is a lousy thing to do? I don’t know how we can condemn John Edwards when Americans have been known to cheer for cheaters in movies, watch celebs do it all the time as a form of perverse entertainment, and even insist we’re not sure what exactly ‘marriage’ means.”  - Kathryn Jean Lopez

CULTURE

“Barack Obama, as Shelby Steele has written, departs from the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton brand of politics in that he is far more sophisticated and subtle in how to play on white guilt and how to intimidate. That’s new. But the liberal content and agenda is not new, and this, blacks continue to buy en masse. The points conservatives have been hammering home for the last 20 years have not been for naught. There is increasing awareness among blacks how family breakdown is driving the social problems of the community. This is not lost on Obama. His speeches paying credence to the importance and relevance of personal responsibility are well received among blacks, but also play well to the whites he wishes to reach. But the program behind the words remains comfortably lodged on the far left. Big government answers for everything, redistribution of wealth, use of law as a tool for politics, liberal abortion policies, and legitimization of the gay agenda. The relevant question is... will black politics - black uniform support for liberals - ever change?”  - Star Parker

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“I couldn’t agree more with David Limbaugh’s take on the race issue. I’m a white male and I wouldn’t vote for Obama in a hundred years. Not because of his race, but rather for his socialist and anti-American agenda.”  - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“It is painfully clear that racism is alive and well in America. Unfortunately, Liberals use race, gender, class and religion as tools to further segregate our society, all the while convincing minorities that they are discriminated against. Besides, what ever would people like Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, et al, do for a living if minorities were no longer oppressed?”  - Houston, Texas

“During the primary races, on two different occasions, I watched the ‘Meet the Press’ panel discuss the race issue in this election. They, without exception, spoke of the surveys that confirmed that ‘angry white men’ would never vote for Obama and that there was still such severe racial prejudice is this country that a black man could not be elected president. When asked why 97 percent of blacks voted for Obama, this was explained away as ‘black pride.’ A white vote against Obama is prejudice; a black vote for Obama is black pride. These bright intellectuals will not consider that a white vote against Obama might be based on policy differences.”  - Hillsborough, California

GOVERNMENT

“Senator Obama has also said many times that he is against ‘special interests.’ But, like most politicians who say that, he means that he is against other politicians’ special interests. His own special interests are never called special interests. Neither are the environmental extremists who support the Democrats called special interests. But the green zealots who have for decades blocked the country from using oil within our own borders - more oil than in Saudi Arabia, by the way - are also among the special interests with a big voice in the Democratic Party. They are also a major factor in shutting down the democratic voting process - in this case, in the House of Representatives, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a vote on drilling for oil in places where the green zealots don’t want drilling. The Congressional Democrats could of course vote to continue forbidding drilling in those places. But voters paying $4 a gallon for gas are not likely to agree with the green zealots - and recent polls show that they do not. Rather than lose votes in the November elections by voting with the green zealots, or lose the money that the green zealots contribute to the Democratic Party coffers, Nancy Pelosi simply shut down the House of Representatives, so that there could be no votes, and turned off the lights so that C-SPAN could not broadcast Republicans’ speeches protesting what happened. After all, what is democracy compared to support from the green zealots?”  - Thomas Sowell
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[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-34
From The Federalist Patriot
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RE: THE LEFT

“I must confess that I am spending an awful lot of time thinking about Barack Obama. I hasten to add that it’s not, as is the case with Chris Matthews, because the Senator sends shivers up my leg. Rather, it’s because I simply can’t figure out how he’s managed to convince so many people that he should be the President of the United States... To be perfectly honest, I invariably feel that way about the candidates the Democrats try to foist off on us. But, as a rule, guys like Dukakis, Gore and Kerry are just typical party hacks. But at least none of them attended a racist church, they didn’t associate with known terrorists and they usually didn’t display their contempt for national symbols and the U.S. military quite so blatantly. Liberals have tried to convince me that Obama is brilliant. I find that odd because he has said that there are 57 states, that JFK got the Russians to remove their missiles from Cuba by sitting down and chatting with Khrushchev, and that Iran doesn’t really constitute an actual threat because they don’t spend as much money on weaponry as we do. Funny, but ‘brilliant’ isn’t the first word that comes to mind. But what do liberals know? They were also convinced that Jimmy Carter was intelligent.”  - Burt Prelutsky

POLITICAL FUTURES

“They’re baaacckkk. Rested and ready, the Clinton crew is busy stirring the pot again. Fresh from a nearly six-week layoff, Hillary and her team are picking up where they left off in June. Her pledges of unity and wholehearted acceptance of Barack Obama as the Democratic Party’s nominee seem to be, well, halfhearted... More important in the short run, there isn’t much [Obama] can do about the Clintons, either. Sort of like the Russians, they do it because they can. They are who they are... But there is no use blaming the Clintons. They can’t help themselves. There’s also another reason not to blame them. It’s Obama’s fault that he isn’t able to shut the door on their endless soap opera. He could never deliver the knockout punch during the primaries and limped across the finish line barely ahead of Hillary in delegates. Even more shocking is that he hasn’t benefited from her absence and ostensible support. He didn’t get a lasting bounce after she conceded June 7 and has actually slipped recently in head-to-head matchups against John McCain. Now that she’s back, her shadow is magnified by his weakness. The more he underperforms the generic Democratic brand, the larger she looms.”  - Michael Goodwin

THE LAST WORD

“After candidates tell you their views on health care or oil prices - every word changeable with the wind - you arrive at the vital questions: What kind of person is this candidate? Does he cherish the things I cherish? In which ways is he like me? Or not? One of the ways Mr. Obama differs from most Americans is his breezy indifference for the nation, which may extend, at times, to active distaste. The flag pin as Kryptonite, failing to place his hand over his heart for the national anthem in Iowa - these are symbolic, but symbolism means something. They reveal a man who gladly tolerated two decades of America-bashing in his church and even worse among his friends and associates. It is, in fact, more relevant than any position paper you might find at his Web site. Even when he attempts to praise America, it is in terms of his magical ability to lift it from a mediocrity imposed by less lofty predecessors. John McCain will use such observations to beat Barack Obama in November. If Hillary Clinton had summoned the nerve to do the same, she would be addressing the convention crowd [as the nominee].”  - Mark David

Veritas vos Liberabit - Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families - especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)